It’d be fair to say that my heart still felt as if it had been run through a meat grinder. I wasn’t ready to let someone get close to me. I wasn’t ready to trust. I wasn’t ready to share so much as a stick of gum with someone else. I turned down any man who approached me, living or dead. And I maintained what I knew to be a doomed and superficial crush on unattainable vampire Gabriel Nightengale because I could tell myself my life wasn’t sad and weird if I was waiting for someone.
To be fair, it turned out he was attainable for Jane. He liked his women unruly and a little disaster-prone.
Still, I was happy with my choices. Solitude simplified my life considerably. I made meaningful connections with my clients. I made new friends. I joined a book club and took Bikram yoga classes, both of which I promptly quit because I was not good at balancing while sweating or talking about books I didn’t finish. I was able to volunteer for a network that supported victims of abusive relationships. I was alone, but I assured myself that didn’t mean I was lonely. I was calm. I was in control.
And then I met Dick Cheney.
The carefully constructed walls I’d built around my heart cracked with each single-entendre he sent my way. Yeah, he was a criminal and a bit of a pervert, but he made me want to be wanted again. I found myself looking forward to every little interaction with him as an indulgence. It was like ice cream. I knew it wasn’t good for me, but it always made me feel better. As long as he stayed in his little box marked “Nope!” I was safe.
But damned if Dick didn’t keep showing me his layers, like in the alley this evening. Why had he been so upset about Mr. Wainwright? I mean, we all loved the elderly bookstore owner; we saw him as a surrogate-grandfather-figure-slash-Team-Jane-mascot. But Dick had to have known and lost lots of humans over the course of his immortal life. Why had this one death affected him so deeply?
And the kiss.
I ducked my head back under the water.
That was not the kiss of a guy who planned to run off at the first sign of twilight. It was like the parts of me that hadn’t felt passion or excitement in years woke up all at once. And they were screaming at me to drag Dick Cheney back to my apartment and make him my love monkey.
Maybe I was just confused by the pairing off in my group of friends. Jane and Gabriel were obviously heading toward a meaningful relationship. And I was happy for them, even if it was a little awkward having received the “let’s just be friends or maybe even less” speech from him.
And Jane’s longtime friend Zeb and his fiancée, Jolene, were hurtling down the aisle, despite the efforts of Jolene’s werewolf relatives to kill Zeb before he reached the altar. That was not hyperbole. Her cousins had dropped a running chainsaw on him and taken one of his pinkie toes.
Maybe this recent square dance of partnering up in my peer group was just reminding me that I was alone. And because I was too anxious to really connect with anyone, maybe I was latching onto Dick because fretting over a possible relationship prevented me from going out and finding an appropriate nonfelon date.
I broke through the surface of the water again and rested the back of my head against the lip of the tub.
Yeah, that was it. Dick was a mirage of my own insecurities and self-destructive urges. I didn’t like him. I liked the idea of him. It had nothing to do with the way his bottle-green eyes took on a naughty sparkle when he made a joke, or the way he was covertly so kind to Jane, helping and supporting her even when it was clear that doing so wouldn’t result in either sex or money. It had nothing to do with the fact that he was respecting my boundaries even though he could use his vampire strength against me at any time. Nope, it had nothing to do with any of that.
This was doing nothing for my confusion.
I sank back down into the warm water, feeling for the tub plug with my toes. Maybe I should start hanging out with more werewolves.
As the water drained, my coral-frosted toes peeked up from the surface. Nope, no werewolves—I liked my pinkie toes too much.
3
While it’s important to shake things up, set new routines, and break free from destructive patterns, there are some habits that you should hold on to—like going to work, paying taxes, and performing basic hygiene.
—Surviving the Undead Breakup: A Human’s Guide to Healing
I needed space. I needed normal. I needed some daylight, because my pale skin had gone, well, beyond the pale. I was reaching creepy, transparent cavefish levels. So, the next morning, I did what any reasonable person did when they needed human interaction and vitamin D: I went to work.
Riverfront Gifts wasn’t exactly the jewel box of the downtown scene. But it was a nice, comfortable, circa 1913 brick building with pressed tin ceilings and oversized plaster medallions above the door. The owner, Margie McClintock, was a mostly reasonable employer who tried to balance the stock between the more refined tastes of the tourists who came into town on riverboat tours (snow globes, blown-glass sculptures made by local artists, handmade lap quilts) with items locals would buy year-round (“I’m with Stupid” T-shirts, “I’m with Stupid” keychains, “I’m with Stupid” aprons—we had a whole “I’m with Stupid” corner). Margie knew about my evening hours but maintained a strict “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy—other than telling me to wear a scarf over any tell-tale bite marks on my neck, because customers didn’t want to think about blood swapping when they were focusing on making vacation memories, of course.
Sorting through the various “I’m with Stupid” products, the Half-Moon Hollow commemorative spoons, and the tiny replicas of the Civil War memorial statue on the park square was soothing. I didn’t have to think about Jane and how much she missed Mr. Wainwright. I didn’t have to think about Dick and how his mouth felt against mine. I just had to count and fold and tell a mother of three that, sure, a commemorative Half-Moon Hollow shot glass could be considered a “tiny educational juice glass” appropriate for her children’s souvenir collections.